scholarly journals Critical Review of Healing Elements: Efficacy and the Social Ecologies of Tibetan Medicine

Pathways ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Gowan
Keyword(s):  
Critical Review ◽  
Explicit Knowledge ◽  
Tibetan Medicine ◽  
Medical Systems ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Social ◽  
Good Manufacturing Practices ◽  
Traditional Tibetan Medicine ◽  
Globalized World ◽  
Sowa Rigpa

This article offers a critical review of Healing Elements: Efficacy and the Social Ecologies of Tibetan Medicine. The ethnography provides rich and comprehensive insights regarding the triumphs and tribulations of Sowa Rigpa (traditional Tibetan medicine) as the medical system is translated across diverse contexts to ensure its continuity within the globalized world; however, these insights can be broadened by more deliberately acknowledging and investigating the (post)colonial subtexts underlying these translations. Incommensurability emerges throughout the ethnography in the form of tensions that arise as tacit knowledge is translated to explicit knowledge in the quest for legitimization. It is argued that expounding the nature of this incommensurability by engaging with rather than rejecting polarized notions of “traditional” and “modern” paradigms can reveal that non-biomedical medical systems and medically pluralistic contexts more broadly are inundated by (post)colonial processes. Borrowing Blaser’s (2013) notion of “Sameing,” it is demonstrated that translation involves (post)colonial processes of assimilation, as Sowa Rigpa is rendered visible through Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), and appropriation, as it is made palatable through pharmaceutical commodification. Furthermore, it is argued that these processes mobilize  mimesis and essentialization to transform Sowa Rigpa into a system that is both legitimized and acquiescent to the imperatives of varying external regimes. The simultaneity of these effects and the position that they are not mutually exclusive is asserted throughout the review as further evidence of (post)colonization.

Tibetan Medicine and Biomedicine: Epistemological Conflicts, Practical Solutions

2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey B. Samuel
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Medicine ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Medical Systems ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Medicinal Substances ◽  
Health And Disease ◽  
Traditional Tibetan Medicine ◽  
The One ◽  
Medical Traditions ◽  
Soul Loss

The western adaptation of non-western medical systems and traditions is a complex process that takes place at a variety of different levels. In many practical medical contexts, epistemological issues receive little attention. Both patients and practitioners may switch frameworks relatively freely, without much concern about underlying theoretical assumptions. Epistemological issues may be more central elsewhere, for example in regard to the licensing and approval of practitioners and medicinal substances, or in terms of the rethinking of western models of knowledge to include new insights from these non-western sources. I suggest in this paper that the major learned medical traditions of Asia, such as āyurveda and traditional Chinese medicine and traditional Tibetan medicine, for all their differences from biomedicine and among each other, are in some respects relatively compatible with western biomedical understandings. They can be read in physiological terms, as referring to a vocabulary of bodily processes that underlie health and disease. Such approaches, however, marginalise or exclude elements that disrupt this compatibility (e.g. references to divinatory procedures, spirit attack or flows of subtle 'energies'). Other non-western healing practices, such as those in which spirit attack, 'soul loss' or 'shamanic' procedures are more central, are less easily assimilated to biomedical models, and may simply be dismissed as incompatible with modern scientific understandings. Rather than assenting to physiological reduction in the one case, and dismissal as pre-scientific in the other, we should look for a wider context of understanding within which both kinds of approach can be seen as part of a coherent view of human beings and human existence.

Mainstreaming Marginality

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Calum Blaikie
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Primary Healthcare ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Tibetan Medicine ◽  
Medical Pluralism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Pharmaceutical Production ◽  
Practice Patient ◽  
Sowa Rigpa ◽  
Prescription Practice

Abstract This article examines the “mainstreaming” of Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan medicine) into primary healthcare in Ladakh, Himalayan India. It explores fields largely overlooked by existing studies of medical integration, such as the social dynamics of public health facilities, the effects of limited drug supplies, and changes in medicine production. Although Sowa Rigpa practitioners experience aspects of their integration as positive, it is also forcing approaches toward prescription practice, patient care, and pharmaceutical production that are at odds with their clinical, social, ethical, and practical grounding. The article argues that integration is exacerbating existing inequalities while creating new forms of hardship and marginality. However, paradoxically, only by occupying such marginal spaces can the amchi continue practicing Sowa Rigpa in a recognizable form. The article later reflects on what the Ladakhi case tells us about the Indian government’s policy of “rational integration” and contributes to debates concerning subaltern therapeutic modes and medical pluralism.

A Tibetan Herbal Formula Understood from a Phytotherapeutical Perspective of tcm

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 353-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Ploberger
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Tibetan Medicine ◽  
Cool Temperature ◽  
Herbal Formula ◽  
Medical Systems ◽  
Body Images ◽  
Materia Medica ◽  
Health And Illness ◽  
Traditional Tibetan Medicine ◽  
Padma 28

In this article I aim to describe the Tibetan formula Padma 28 from the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine (tcm) phytotherapy as practised in Europe. As a biomedical physician and tcm practitioner, familiar also with traditional Tibetan medicine (ttm), I would like to underline that these two Asian medical systems are on one hand fundamentally different based on culturally distinct concepts and practices of health and illness, including different body images. On the other hand, they can be, and in fact are, correlated with each other in practice via their shared specific materia medica. This article represents a first attempt at establishing an understanding via translation, by relating distinct ttm and tcm efficacies as well as my own personal tasting of the single ingredients of the Tibetan formula Padma 28. tcm terminology translated into English is relatively well established and may provide a lingua franca, other than predominant biomedicine, for communication about Tibetan and Chinese prescriptions, and about individual plants. From a tcm perspective, Padma 28 has an overall neutral or slightly cool temperature effect and an acrid, bitter, and slightly aromatic taste. This formula can be used to promote the movement of qi and blood in a mild way without injuring the yin. Furthermore, it strengthens the spleen qi and spleen yang. Responding to the regulatory context in Europe, certain ingredients in this Tibetan formula have been left out and substituted by others—a practice that is regarded as common in tcm formulations.

G.K. Chesterton’s Works in Literary-Critical Review by K.I. Chukovsky

2020 ◽  
pp. 37-47
Author(s):  
Svetlana Morozova ◽  
Dmitrij Zhatkin
Keyword(s):  
Critical Review ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Social Disorder ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Critical Attitude ◽  
The Social

The article is devoted to the perception of K.I. Chukovsky’s works by a famous English writer G.K. Chesterton. K.I. Chukovsky was one of the first to point out the ambiguity of the literary works by the English writer and called his journalistic activity more convincing. Describing G.K. Chesterton’s essays, K.I. Chukovsky believed that the writer is second to none in this genre. He praised G.K. Chesterton’s journalistic talent in responding to all the phenomena of contemporary social life. K.I. Chukovsky considered it obligatory for the Russian readers to familiarize themselves with the critical works of the English author. In the essay «Gilbert Chesterton. Manalive» (1924) K.I. Chukovsky substantiated why, for all the variety of genre forms that G.K. Chesterton used, Russian readers were familiar with only a few of his works. K.I. Chukovsky’s critical attitude to the novel «Manalive» is explained by his rejection of G.K. Chesterton’s utopian attitude to the social situation in England at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries. In G.K. Chesterton’s works K.I. Chukovsky saw a simulation of revolutionary pathos that did not solve pressing issues of social disorder.

Jumbos and Jumping Devils

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nisha P R
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Social History ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of

Jumbos and Jumping Devils is an original and pioneering exploration of not only the social history of the subcontinent but also of performance and popular culture. The domain of analysis is entirely novel and opens up a bolder approach of laying a new field of historical enquiry of South Asia. Trawling through an extraordinary set of sources such as colonial and post-colonial records, newspaper reports, unpublished autobiographies, private papers, photographs, and oral interviews, the author brings out a fascinating account of the transnational landscape of physical cultures, human and animal performers, and the circus industry. This book should be of interest to a wide range of readers from history, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies to analysts of history of performance and sports in the subcontinent.

Polyvinyl Alcohol/Chitosan Composite Hydrogels with Sustained Release of Traditional Tibetan Medicine for Promoting Chronic Diabetic Wound Healing

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xingyu Chen ◽  
Zuxin Wang ◽  
Shan Gao ◽  
Wanlin Zhang ◽  
Hanwen Gong ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Wound Healing ◽  
Polyvinyl Alcohol ◽  
Sustained Release ◽  
Skin Diseases ◽  
Tibetan Medicine ◽  
Diabetic Wound ◽  
Composite Hydrogels ◽  
Diabetic Wound Healing ◽  
Traditional Tibetan Medicine ◽  
Chitosan Composite

The Tibetan eighteen flavor dangshen pills (TEP) are composed of 18 traditional Tibetan medicines, which are commonly used in the treatment of skin diseases in the Tibetan medicine system. They...

scholarly journals Anthropological analysis on recent covid-19 infection in Italy

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
V A Sironi ◽  
M A Riva
Keyword(s):  
Medical Information ◽  
National Level ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Cognitive Distortion ◽  
Psychological Reactions ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
The Social ◽  
Informative Role ◽  
Globalized World

Abstract The recent epidemic caused by the Covid-19 virus, which originated in China and then spread rapidly, can rightly be defined as the real 'first' epidemic in the social era. In an increasingly globalized world other recent epidemics (but more circumscribed, even if severely more lethal, such as Ebola and Sars) have been experienced with less media and emotional involvement, while the recent epidemic due to the new coronavirus has generated deserving reactions of analysis from an anthropological and social point of view, rather than on a health aspect. In Italy the epidemic event provoked sometimes excessive and irrational psychological reactions (from an unjustified panic to an irresponsible underestimation) and a cognitive distortion on anthropological level (wrong perspective perception of the pathological event). It has also generated disproportionate social repercussions at national level (refusal of stay for subjects coming from the lands in which diseased people are present) and at international level (foreclosure of landing of Italian tourists in some foreign countries). There was also incorrect medical information (confusion between infected - asymptomatic and/or non-hospitalized paucisymptomatic -, real patients with important symptoms - hospitalized - and sometimes in need of intensive care, subjects - the elderly and carriers of other serious diseases - died not for but with the Covid-19 infection) generated and amplified also by the pounding informative role of the mass media and by the news (often inaccurate and generating fake-news) spread in real time through social media. Key messages Irrational reactions must be avoided. Correct medical information are indispensable.

Knowledge creation and utilization in project teams

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 351-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Ihuoma Oluikpe
Keyword(s):  
Project Management ◽  
Tacit Knowledge ◽  
Explicit Knowledge ◽  
Project Teams ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Relational Processes ◽  
Knowledge Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Tacit Dimension ◽  
Organizational Results

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the knowledge processes that interplay in the social construction and appropriation of knowledge and to test these constructs empirically in project teams. Design/methodology/approach – Literature research and quantitative survey were used. The research identified project success, faster completion times, operational efficiency, innovation and generation of new knowledge as dominating project management expectations in the past ten years. It studied how these projects construct and appropriate knowledge within project teams to achieve these five objectives. Using a quantitative approach, data were sought from 1,000 respondents out of a population of 10,000 from 11 project management areas in eight world regions to test the conceptual model in real-world scenarios. The data gathered were analyzed using quantitative analysis tools and techniques such as reliability, correlation and regression. Findings – There is a lingering difficulty within organizations on how to translate tacit knowledge into action. The transfer and utilization of tacit knowledge was shown to be embedded and nested within relationships. Innovation in projects was found to be mostly linked to replication and codification of knowledge (explicit dimension) as opposed to interpretation and assimilation (tacit dimension). Arriving at a mutual interpretation of project details and requirements does not depend on canonical (formal documentation) methods but mostly on non-canonical (informal) and relational processes embedded within the team. Originality/value – This work studies, in empirical and geographical detail, the social interplay of knowledge and provided evidence relative to the appropriation of knowledge in the project organizational form, which can be extrapolated to wider contexts. The work scoped the inter-relational nature of knowledge and provided further evidence on the nebulous nature of tacit/intangible knowledge. It also proved further that organizations mostly rely on explicit knowledge to drive organizational results, as it is easily actionable and measurable.

Authenticating and distinguishing the eight species of traditional Tibetan medicine “Meiduoluomi” by microscopic technique

2009 ◽  
Vol 72 (10) ◽  
pp. 727-736 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing An ◽  
Jie Li ◽  
Jiang-Gang Wang ◽  
Zhi-Feng Zhang ◽  
Chu Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Medicine ◽  
Microscopic Technique ◽  
Traditional Tibetan Medicine

The Efficacy of Collaboration: Tibetan Medicine Across Countries and Conversations

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 152-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sienna Craig
Keyword(s):  
International Association ◽  
The United States ◽  
Tibetan Medicine ◽  
Qinghai Province ◽  
Traditional Medicines ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Tibet Autonomous Region ◽  
Asian Medicine ◽  
Hands On Learning ◽  
Sowa Rigpa

First delivered as a plenary lecture at the ictam viii congress in September 2013 in South Korea, this paper discusses two interdisciplinary and collaborative workshops focusing on Tibetan medicine (also known as Sowa Rigpa) in contemporary contexts. The first event, which took place in December 2011, brought together nearly 40 practitioners of Sowa Rigpa from the greater Himalaya and Tibetan regions of the People’s Republic of China (prc), along with four anthropologists, for intensive, interactive discussions on pharmacology by making medicines together. The second event, which took place in October 2012 in Xining, Qinghai Province, prc, involved practitioners, educators, and researchers from the Arura Group, one of the leading Tibetan medicine institutions in the prc, with researchers from the United States, Europe, and tar (Tibet Autonomous Region) for in-depth discussions about integrative clinical research and the place of the humanities and social sciences in the study of traditional medicines. Both events were supported, directly or indirectly, by the International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine (iastam), and abided in spirit with the mission of this organisation, namely, to bring scholars and practitioners of Asian medicine together for mutual exchange. While the Kathmandu event emphasised hands-on learning and the co-production of both knowledge and things, the Xining workshop provided Tibetan medical colleagues in the prc with the opportunity to engage with broad discussions, at once methodological and epistemological, about the meaning, purpose, and aims of research on traditional medicines today.

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